Portland Voters Will Have Chance To Boost Minimum Wage Even Higher On November Ballot

A citizens referendum will appear on the ballot in November and could see Portland join several other cities with the highest minimum wage in the country.

Getty Images

According to the Portland Press Herald, voters in Portland will have an opportunity to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 per hour for non-tipped workers in November. Portlanders for a Living Wage, a group that pushed for this referendum, advocated for the change to be implemented incrementally through 2019. Tipped workers wouldn't be completely left out either. Their hourly wage would increase to $11.25 by 2019 under this plan. Read the specific details here courtesy of the Portland Press Herald.

Portland is hardly breaking new ground however. An article at Time.com outlined some of the major cities across the country who had already implemented plans to increase their city minimum wage to $15 per hour. Some of those cities include Seattle, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Portland's hospitality industry is strongly opposed to the minimum wage increase. They claim it will force restaurants out of the city and other small businesses to close their doors completely.

The City Council in Portland has already approved a minimum wage increase to $10.10 per hour starting January 1st, 2016. This ballot referendum would allow voters to supersede that in favor of increasing the minimum wage even higher.